Author: Jed Rubenfeld is a Professor of Law at
Yale University. He has been described as “one of the most elegant legal
writers of his generation”. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut, with his wife
and two daughters. The Interpretation of Murder is his first book. This novel
was a huge bestseller and published in thirty-six countries. Since then he has
published his second novel “The Death Instinct”.
My thoughts: I remember very well
why I bought this book among so many other novels displayed on the shelf of the
bestsellers in the Portuguese bookstore Bertrand. What seduced me in this book
was the first lines of the novel. Immediately, I knew that I would like to read
it.
« THERE IS NO mystery to happiness. Unhappy men are alike.
Some wound they suffered long ago, some wish denied, some blow to pride, some
kindling spark of love put out by scorn--or worse, indifference--cleaves to
them, or they to it, and so they live each day within a shroud of yesterdays.
The happy man does not look back. He doesn’t look ahead. He lives in the
present. But there’s the rub. The present can never deliver one thing: meaning.
The ways of happiness and meaning are not the same. To find happiness, a man
need only live in the moment; he need only live for the moment. But if he wants
meaning--the meaning of his dreams, his secrets, his life--a man must
re-inhabit his past, however dark, and live for the future, however uncertain.
Thus nature dangles happiness and meaning before us all, insisting only that we
choose between them. »
This story is set in Manhattan in 1909. It is about solving a
murder mystery using psychoanalysis with the help of Dr Sigmund Freud, who
happens to be in America for one week with a group of colleagues, Sándor
Ferenczi and Carl Jung, all followers of Freud’s psychoanalysis theories in
Europe.
Dr. Freud is invited to lecture at Clark University, in New York.
During this visit he is welcomed and escorted by Dr Stratham Younger, a
professor at Clark University.
This story is narrated by Dr Stratham Younger. A woman, Miss Riverford, is killed by strangulation
and soon after, the beautiful 18 year-old Nora Acton, of a reputable family, is
attacked. She shows similar wounds to those of Miss Riverford and theories
abound that Miss Nora Acton’s attacker is the same person who killed the rich
Miss Riverford. The arrest of the killer is complicated by the fact that Miss
Nora Acton is unable to remember her attack, claiming amnesia. Hence, Dr
Stratham Younger is given the job of analysing Miss Nora Acton and, with the
help of Dr Freud, sets out to solve the mystery and help cure her.
As the story unfolds we feel the intrigue grow and start wondering
who the villain is. Is it the wealthy entrepreneur George Banwell? Is it the
mysterious William Leon of Chinatown, in whose room one of the corpses is
found? Or is it Harry Thaw, the notorious murderer of Stanford White, who may
have slipped out from the Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane?
I loved this intriguing plot. I also loved the fact that Jed
Rubenfeld has done a tremendous amount of research in order to use true facts
and events in this intelligent fictional story. This suspense story is
different compared to other crime novels that I have read. There is much more
focus on psychiatry, but it is still easy to understand and I must say the reader
learns a lot, while being entertained at the same time. A masterpiece that I
invite you to read this summer!